Vayera

No name is given for Lot’s wife in the Torah.  However, the Midrash tells her names as Idit.

 

It is puzzling why she was transformed into a pillar of salt for gazing back at the destruction of the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. 

 

There us a n ancient Jewish custom that when we break bread and offer it to strangers that we also offer salt as a condiment.  Just as the salt was a reminder of the sacrifices in the Temple, which were salted, so too, salt was a necessary ingredient for survival in a desert –like climate.

According to Midrash Rabbah, Idit did not want to admit the strangers that showed up at her doorstep into her home.  They came to inform Lot and his family about the city’s impending doom.  

 

Idit also did not want to feed them, much less admit them.  Again, referring to the old midrash, Idit went to her neighbor’s home to borrow salt for the strangers because she did not want to use her own (at the same time she was warning the inhabitant of Sodom that there were strangers in the house whom she resented). For those reasons, when she gazed back at the home she did not want to leave, God turned her into the object she wanted to deprive the visitors.

 

Rashi comments: “For salt she sinned, salt she became.”